Ice Cream
by shellalana
Summary: Brick finds Tina crying as they head to Eden-6 and tries to offer her some comfort. Mordecai does a bad job by deflecting.


Ever since Brick had left home, he hadn't had much experience comforting others when they were down. He could give great hugs, but that was the extent of what he knew. Words weren't his strong suit, so he had a penchant for saying the wrong thing.

But his heart didn't break any less when he heard sniffles coming from Tina's quarters. The little blonde girl had had so much happen in her life already, he thought that getting away from Pandora would have been good for her. Getting away from those bad memories, a new chance at life somewhere else and she would be helping out now that she was a little older. How wrong he turned out to be.

A light rapping of his knuckle against her door halted the noise, and a barked "what!" had him recoiling. Tina was all about her pride, not wanting other people to worry about her. He couldn't fault her for that. She'd lived on her own for so long she was used to taking care of herself. There'd been no one around to see her in her weakest moments, those times when she couldn't maintain a stiff upper lip.

"Tina, it's me..."

"Go away!"

He knew he should listen. "Always respect a girl's need for privacy" his sister once told him, many, many years ago. But it twisted the knot in his chest even tighter to consider walking away and leaving her to her sorrows. They were a team now. Teammates were supposed to help each other out.

"I'm coming in anyway."

_Click._

The door creaked open a few inches and Brick waited. There was no rush of footsteps and no pushing back against his palm. It seemed Tina was resigned to his entry, despite her protest.

A distorted square of golden-yellow light fell across the teenager's huddled form in her bed. A pillow hugged to her face, Brick could tell from her shaking shoulders that she was still crying. He sighed and sucked on his bottom lip in thought. Don't screw this up, he told himself.

The room was plunged back into darkness when he closed the door behind him. All was quiet, save for the quick, rabbit-like pants Tina kept muffled in her pillow. She shifted with Brick's sudden weight on the mattress, pulling everything towards him like some crude black hole.

"You wanna talk about it?" he offered. Any words that came to mind at that moment felt like the wrong ones.

Tina shook her head. Her blonde hair stuck up every which way, and it felt slightly damp to the touch when he tried to smooth it back.

"That's fine. I'll do all the talking then. I'm gonna talk from personal experience, so I'm not saying this has anything to do with you. But I remember when I was younger, the first time I left Menoetius to go find my sister, I was scared as hell. I didn't know nobody else and I thought something bad was gonna happen to me before I found her. I had no one watching my back and I was leaving behind everything I knew."

A shift to his left revealed those staring blue eyes of hers, tinged with red as she peered at him over the top of the pillow.

"Yeah, I know. You wouldn't think someone like me would get scared, but I didn't always look like this." Brick raised and clenched his fists with an offered smile. Despite what people thought, he didn't pop out of the womb all big and muscle-y. He'd been a shrimp as a kid, just as easy to push around like anyone else.

"Before I got on that shuttle, my mother grabbed me into the biggest hug she could and whispered in my ear: when all else fails, punch em' and run. That's what's kept me going so far."

"I'm not big and strong like you. We're leaving Roland behind. We're leaving _Lilly _behind. Why does my family always have to get broken up?"

To that, Brick had nothing to say. He was used to being on his own, moving from one place to the next to find what he was looking for. Planting roots hadn't really sat with him until the Raiders had been formed, and even then, that hadn't really lasted. His temper had gotten the better of him and he'd been exiled for going against the "Raider code."

Tina was different. She watched her parents murdered before her very eyes, had a second father-figure murdered by a maniac for trying to do the right thing. They hadn't even had a body to put in a grave. And she was still a child, putting on a brave face so that people wouldn't know just how much she was hurting inside.

"We're not. Think of this like... a mini-vacation. Me and Mordy are here, aren't we?"

"Yeah, but for how long?" she whimpered into the pillow.

Brick exhaled and ran a hand over his head and down the back of his neck. That wasn't a question he could really answer. It wasn't even something he wanted to contemplate, really. He'd already been close to it once when Hyperion had shot down their barge, almost burning alive along with Mordecai. Those moments of pure terror had been fleeting, swept under the rug as "just something that happened" so that he wouldn't have to consider the true ramifications of what those thoughts meant. He was better at punching, not thinking.

"Long as we keep doin' our jobs." The door cracked open and Mordecai stuck his head in. He must have been listening to their conversation from the other side, which made Brick a little self-conscious of what the sniper had actually heard.

His answer wasn't helping either, even if it was true. What Tina needed right now was hope, not the blunt force trauma of honesty.

"Brick and I got the best demolitions expert watching our backs, of course we're gonna keep kickin'. Long as you don't try to blow us up, anyhow."

Tina chucked her pillow right at his face, hot tears still streaming down her cheeks. Mordecai easily deflected the projectile.

"What do you take me for?! An idiot who doesn't know how to do her job?"

"Nope. And that's why I ain't worried. Now I hear Lil left a few pints of strawberry ice cream in the fridge for all of us, but I was thinkin' of eatin' it all myself..."

Tina's bolted out of there, almost tripping over the bedsheets, with her mouth screwed up in determination. She bodily shoved the tall Truxican out of the way and disappeared down the hallway.

"Was that really the right thing to say?" Smothering over feelings with promises of ice cream seemed counterproductive.

"She's not crying anymore."

"_Mordy_."

"_What!_"

"Tina is feeling scared right now and we should be there for her. Not... drowning every problem with food!"

"It makes her feel better for a while, right? Instead of sitting here, sobbing over things she can't change. Plus she's not a kid."

"She _is_ a kid. ... I just think you should be more sensitive about her feelings."

"Says the guy who punches things instead of talking things out."

"Yeah, and I don't want her to be like me. I want her to be _better_." The bed complained under Brick's weight as he pushed himself up to his feet. Mordecai's words had struck a nerve; he was trying to be more than just a musclehead, the brute force of the group. Sure, he was good at it, but he wanted to be remembered for more than just that and his bounty posters.

"And she will be, with you watchin' her back." Mordecai stepped out of his way and gestured in the direction Tina had taken. "Those kinda conversations are always easier over ice cream anyway. Spoon full o'sugar, right?"

In that light, Brick couldn't hold a grudge against the sniper for his suggestion. Food had a way of making things a little easier to deal with, and this was one of those times Brick needed all the help he could get.  
"Spoons're in the drawer. You got this." Calloused fingers brushed against his shoulder in passing as Mordecai headed back to his room. It was somewhat comforting, knowing that the Truxican would continue to have his back, even when he wasn't really helping.

"But if she eats too much, I'm not helping you hold her hair when she pukes."


End file.
